Loudly And Clearly

Data is changing our world and the way we live and work at an unprecedented rate. Depending on your viewpoint, we're either at the start of something incredibly exciting or we're entering a terrifying Big Brother era where our every move can be tracked – and even predicted. And both sides have a point. Business leaders and managers, however, have little time for data scepticism. Data is already revolutionizing the way companies operate and it will become increasingly critical to organizations in the coming years. Those companies that view data as a strategic asset are the ones that will survive and thrive. With the massive growth in big data and the Internet of Things, plus rapidly evolving methods for analysing data, the importance of data across every area of business will only grow. And the amount of data we're creating continues to increase rapidly. What does that even mean? If we learn how to read it properly, this huge amount of data can be put to use to do pretty muc...

  Just as consumers have become accustomed to flipping the channel any time a commercial airs, we now swipe or scroll past a brand that we perceive to be advertising to us. As such, it's more important than ever to speak like a human rather than a brand that is selling something. That's not marketing. That's being present in someone's life. It isn't something that you can automate. Most brand marketers that I meet want to have the biggest Instagram account in their industry. You don't need thousands or millions to succeed in this game. But you do need people who care enough about your company to tell their friends about you. It's no different from network marketing or multi-level marketing. My immediate answer to her wasn't in the form of a plan to engage 30 million followers, because I know for a fact that would be impossible. Even then, these remaining 300,000 people, on average, are not seeing the brand's content much less engaging with it because...

Flexibility has long been recognized as a positive attribute in business. Thus, if the level of demand increases or decreases the factory can quickly adjust output to meet that change. Flexibility in the factory can be achieved through focusing on set-up time reduction to achieve quicker change-overs, by eliminating bottlenecks to free up capacity and by multi-skilling on the shopfloor amongst other means. Whilst this type of flexibility will always be desirable, we need to take a wider view. In a world where supply chains are the source of competitive advantage, not just the factory, it is imperative that the concept of flexibility be extended throughout the entire supply/demand network. Hence, the likelihood is that the network is no longer ‘optimal' for current conditions. Indeed it can be argued that because today's highly interconnected global supply/demand networks are akin to complex systems they can never actually be ‘optimized'. All that supply chain decision maker...

Companies and managers need new, innovative ideas. Because companies in advanced economies have become so efficient at producing physical goods, most workers have been freed up to provide services like training, entertainment, research, and advertising. Efficient factories with fewer workers produce the cereals and cell phones the market demands; meanwhile, more and more workers create software and invent new products. These workers, whose primary contributions are ideas and problem-solving expertise, are often referred to as knowledge workers. Determining whether employees they are doing a good job can be difficult because the manager cannot simply count or measure a knowledge worker’s output. Also, these workers often are most motivated to do their best when the work is interesting, not because of a carrot or stick dangled by the manager. Harnessing Intellectual Resources Because the success of modern businesses so often depends on the knowledge used for innovation and the delivery o...

Some people make coming up with new ideas look easy. They just open their mouths and, as if by magic originality appears. For others, the opposite is true. They think of creativity as something that other people do. They have never had an idea and couldn’t be creative if their lives or jobs depended on it.  It’s tempting to believe that people are just born creative or non-creative. It’s a commonly held view that having creativity is mysterious and unknowable. Perhaps this is because many make the mistake of concentrating on the “eureka” moment itself and ignoring the creative process that leads up to it.  New ideas do not appear from nowhere. It’s just that the work needed to produce them tends to be behind the scenes and in the heads of creative people. They follow certain steps and share particular behaviours - anyone can learn enough about them to improve their own creative ability. Creative People Love Ideas Creative people love ideas. They collect them. They enjoy ideas ...